


Bask

by hereliesnils



Category: Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:35:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23596192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hereliesnils/pseuds/hereliesnils
Summary: Set in the aftermath of The Promised Land. Rimmer moves back in.
Relationships: Dave Lister/Arnold Rimmer
Comments: 11
Kudos: 70





	Bask

It didn't take long for Rimmer to fall back into his usual routine. Two days after they left the cat fleet, Lister found him inspecting the corridors for scuffed bolts with a fleet of skutters trailing behind him.

“I got rid of the stuff,” Lister said. 

“Got rid of? As in jettisoned it like I suggested weeks ago?” Rimmer said. 

“Some of it, yeah.”

“Only some of it?”

“Kryten's boxing the rest of it up so we can send it down to the hold. He's making labels.”

“Ah, well I suppose that's his idea of a splendid night in.” 

“Means the room's back to how it was.”

“Fetid?” 

“Only my bits.”

“I don't want to know about your bits,” Rimmer said.

Lister pushed away from the wall with a roll of his shoulder and turned to saunter back down the corridor. 

“See ya, Mighty.”

***

Rimmer turned up precisely ten minutes before his usual bedtime in his iridescent pyjamas; the ones that sometimes caught Lister off guard and made him laugh even though he had been looking at some variation of them for the past thirty years. He set a box of his belongings next to the bottom bunk without so much as a glance up at Lister and waited for two skutters to shunt a second, larger box into the room. A final skutter followed with what might have been one of the Cat's gleaming shoes held tight in its pincers.

“Off you go,” Rimmer gave them a sharp wave. As they left, the shoe gave way with a crunch.

“Welcome back,” Lister said to the top of Rimmer's head.

“It's only practical, Listy, there's no point in having Kryten clean two rooms.”

“Since when do you care about Kryten's cleaning schedule?”

“It's simple resource management, Listy. Why else would we have spent the last three decades sharing a bunk in a ship as big as a, as a-”

Rimmer hitched up the legs of his pyjamas with a fussy little pinching motion and lowered himself to sit on his bunk. The last time he had seen it was obscured entirely by a giant plastic cactus, a cracked air hockey board on its side, and several stacks of empty cracker boxes. The sheets were freshly laundered and ironed courtesy of Kryten, but to his surprise all his old decorations were still pristine and set in their rightful places on the back wall. Rimmer assumed his bed had been desecrated with more of the shit Lister had accumulated, and the vivid thought of jagged piles of tat tearing at his newspaper clippings and pressing ugly little indents into his swimming certificate had kept him up at night. But no, that air hockey board had been lifted away to reveal his bunk as he had left it, like a-

A creak from above his head interrupted his train of thought. Lister dropped down from his bunk and landed on his feet with a thud and a hiss of pain. 

“I'm getting to old for that,” Lister said.

“Getting?”

Rimmer made to swing his legs up into bed and end the conversation before it started, only for Lister to sit down next to him. Rimmer froze in a strange recoiled position with his knees drawn up and his hand splayed on the mattress. 

“What?” Lister said.

“What?” Rimmer said. 

“I just wanted to say I'm glad you're back. It was weird when you went.”

“It was weird when you filled the room with your probably-already-past-your-mid-life crisis.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Rimmer set his feet back on the floor and folded his arms over his chest. The light caught his pyjamas and cast traces of red and green through the blue fabric. 

“Look,” Lister said, “I think we're supposed to be together.”

Rimmer blinked, raised his chin, and turned to Lister with undeniable wonder spread all over that eminently readable face.

“Come 'ere,” Lister said. 

He opened his arms with caution, like he was trying not to startle a small animal, and eased them around those broad shoulders. Rimmer sunk against him so quickly that Lister's hands snapped open and grasped at the air, ready for a flash of light, ready for him to collapse into his light bee, ready to catch him again. Instead, Rimmer stayed solid and heavy against his chest, and Lister let his palms come to rest against those stupid pyjamas.

“No more hoarding,” Rimmer said into Lister's shoulder. 

“No more threatening to turn yourself off forever.”

“Touché.”

It took all of Lister's resolve not to rock from side to side. A faint and fond memory flickered in the back of his mind, of two tiny faces staring up at him as he did exactly that, and a soft-light Rimmer stood over them with his hands on his hips, looking proud for reasons neither of them would ever try to explain. 

“Me and you, yeah?” Lister said. 

He felt Rimmer's head move against him. 

“Are you nodding?”

The same movement again.

“I dunno what y-”

“Yes!” 

“Yes what?” Lister smirked against Rimmer's hair.

"Me and you, Listy. Me and you."

**Author's Note:**

> 1) You can decide whether this ends with a some lovely cuddling or DIAMOND LIGHT FUCKING. 
> 
> 2) I decided to take the joke about Rimmer's books as confirmation that he does have OCD. 
> 
> 3) I ❤️ off-screen shoe-eating skutter.


End file.
